Tuesday, April 2, 2013

If you have a smartphone, you probably use a to-do-list app or a reminder app that reminds you to do certain tasks, at certain times of the day. These apps are great if your life works like clockwork, but life is anything but predictable. Normal time-based task reminders don't work in real-life situations. Say you want to buy milk on the way back home from work. You set a reminder for 5 PM and it reminds you exactly at 5 PM. But chances are you might still be at work, stuck in traffic or you might have already reached home. Wouldn't it be great if an app can remind you to pick up milk when you are near a store? Localert does just that.

Localertallows you to set tasks not based on time but based on locations. You create a task, such as pick up groceries, and then set a location to it – the supermarket, or wherever you get your groceries from. The app then monitors your location and your pending tasks and as soon as you get close to the supermarket, it reminds you with an alarm that you have to pick groceries.

Localert gives off two alarms – once when you are near the location, and the second, when you are really close. These distances can be configured from the app settings. By default, the first alarm sounds when you are within 1 Km of the location. The second alarm goes off when you get to within 100 meters. These values can be adjusted in units of kilometers, for the first level alarm, and in units of ‘100 meters’, for the second level alarm.

The best part is that the app does not need you to turn on your GPS to monitor your location, and thus saves a lot on battery. It can use cell tower signals alone with a good amount of accuracy. Of course, you can turn on GPS if you want pin-point accuracy.

To make setting tasks easier, there are 20 predefined tasks in the app. So if you want to say, buy groceries, you don't have to type in 'Buy groceries', but just click the 'Buy groceries button'. The app enters the necessary text for you. You can also create your own custom task if it does not fit into any of the 20 categories. You can also enter additional notes with each task.

To set a location enter an address on the map and it takes you that location. From there, you can press and hold on the map pin and drag it to the exact. You can also choose your current location to set an alert for a future date.

Other features include:

Turn by turn navigation to the task location

Speak out notes

Put off alarms until specified date and time. For instance, you want to be reminded to pick up groceries only in the evening when you leave from work to home and not the other way around in the morning.